Breaking News

By Shirani Rajapakse

A young girl searches for a loved one. A mother grieves for her sons. A soldier wakes up with a missing limb. A woman reveals her true nature when she blows herself up. A young boy is traumatized by the loss of his baby sister. These nine stories take you through glimpses of two civil wars and what it's like to live under the threat of terrorism. Yet all is not dreary; there are glimpses of humor and satire as life goes on amidst pain and suffering.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shirani Rajapakse
• Release date: Nov 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9789553828521

Book preview

Praise for Breaking News

A 2010 Gratiaen Award shortlist

Each story in the collection is located within a different social milieu, and yet, the author manages to do justice to each different social background she portrays. When she describes situations in which the main characters are the victims of violence, she manages to convey to the reader their emotions in powerfully descriptive language, which is poetic and nuanced. She does not merely use a linear narrative style but experiments with literary devices like flashbacks and at times employs overarching metaphors in some of her stories.

-  Judges’ Comments, Gratiaen Award 2010, Sri Lanka

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"Humorous or heartbreaking, plain prose or philosophical, Rajapakse shows immense talent in this collection of stories. Readers will find it easy to finish the book in a single setting, but they will find it difficult to forget Rajapakse’s elegant turn of phrase and the depth with which she tackles her plots and characters. While the majority of the media may focus on more prominent wars and military conflicts, the defeat of the Tamil Tigers marked the beginning of a new era in Sri Lanka and Rajapakse does her native country complete justice (and then some) with Breaking News."

-  Ekta R. Garg, Bookpleasures, USA

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The language is simple and unadorned, marked by a starkness exactly appropriate to the subject matter. The stories contain oblique descriptions of people and places, but pain and loss form the major chord in these related arias.

-  Luke Sherwood, Basso Profundo, USA

Copyright © 2017 Shirani Rajapakse

Published by Shirani Rajapakse

The right of Shirani Rajapakse to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with International Copyright Treaties and Conventions.

All rights reserved. Except for short excerpts for use in reviews and other non-commercial uses as deemed fit by law, no part of this work may be translated, reproduced, distributed or transmitted in electronic or mechanical form including, but not limited to  photocopying, recording,  scanning or in any form or by any other means now known or hereafter invented, or uploaded and distributed via the internet, or stored in a database or introduced into a retrieval system without the prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this work may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.

Cover image and design by FayeFayeDesigns

Both the print and ebook are sold subject to the condition that they shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the author’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

These stories are works of fiction. The names – save where obviously genuine, characters and incidents portrayed in them are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

First Published in 2011

Second Print edition 2018

First ebook published in 2017

Paperback: ISBN: 978-955-38285-5-2

eBook: ISBN: 978-955-38285-2-1

1. Short Stories. 2. Fiction—21st century. 3. General. 4. Sri Lanka. 5. Literary fiction. 6. Asian Writer. 7. Shirani Rajapakse.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, or to translate, write to Shirani Rajapakse Image result for gmail icon   Image result for hotmail icon

Missing Pieces

There was something very wrong. He knew it the moment his foot touched the ground. His right foot. But he lifted it up anyway. The noise deafened him. It threw him away. Far away. And then he remembered no more.

He woke up to a searing pain in his leg. There was nothing where his leg had been, except the pain, incessant, searing, gripping. How could there be pain for something that didn’t exist?

The sun mercilessly sprayed its rays down on him as he lay writhing in a cauldron of pain that seemed to turn and twist him in every direction. He tried to stand, but could not. Tried to sit, that too he could not. The others hovered around him, unsure how to react. They were new recruits just like him and although they had gone through the drill, the sudden shock of it all, to see one of their fellow travelers going through what they could only imagine made them balk. They stood over him, a human wall surrounding him, watching helplessly, not sure what to say or do. He heard someone say something that was lost in the howl of his pain.

Someone gestured, but that too was lost in the glare of the searing heat. The gesture flapped helplessly in the air and was seemingly lost in the breeze. They stood watching him, listening to him, their fear mounting. They were talking among themselves, asking him questions, telling him things, but it was all a whole lot of sounds that flew about the breeze. He heard, but didn’t understand. They watched him on the ground. They had no idea what do to.

They must have stood there for an eternity. Then someone broke out of the trance and shouted out an order. The others awoke from their daze. They bent down to pick him up, whatever was left of him. He waited unmoving except in whatever direction the pain pushed him until someone pulled him up. Someone else picked him up. They dragged him away half crazed, dripping with blood like a carcass of a cow hung up on a hook inside the butchers shop.

Except that this was no dead cow but a man screaming to live.

The piece of leg that caught the full impact of the shock had long since disappeared: scattered all around the Vanni like specks of dust. Some had stuck to the leaves and branches of trees while the rest had just melted away, or so it seemed. There was nothing left to take except the remains of the man to which the leg belonged. They half dragged, half carried the now screaming, now fainting man almost half a mile to where the rest were waiting. They threw him into the jeep and tumbled in after him. He lay groaning, fainting and bleeding, covering the floor of the jeep brown red with his blood.

The engine roared to life and moved through the harsh terrain, retracing its path back to civilization. All the while, he lay there on the floor feeling every movement of the wheels as they moved over rocks and undergrowth and swayed past trees that seemed to appear in their path out of nowhere. Every time the wheels rolled a little closer to the destination, the pain moved a little harder inside him. He blacked out, regained consciousness, only to pass out again as the pain pushed deeper and deeper into him like an electric drill. He didn’t know how many times he must have fainted.  Every time he opened his eyes he saw the dark shroud of branches overhead and someone looking down at him with despair.

He made it to the hospital many miles away. He didn’t know how long it took or how far he had travelled. But he got there somehow. They had managed to drive to the hospital without any incident. He was lucky, they said. Others didn’t have it that easy. They sometimes had to wait for days in and out of pain, as progress out of the Vanni was frequently hampered by threats. They were treated by those around them, with whatever they had with them. But this wasn’t always enough. If they were lucky they would make it through with the treatment, but if not, then they left their last breath in the Vanni.

He was one of the fortunate ones, or so they said, although he wondered how he was so. He woke up to see the bright white coats of the men who pulled him out and